The comments keep on coming, so… reposted to the top AGAIN
28 Percent Believe the Bible Is Literally True
A little more than one quarter of Americans believe the Bible is the literal word of God, down 10 percentage points since 1976.
According to a recent survey by the Gallup Poll, 28 percent of Americans believe the Bible is literally true, compared to 38 percent 30 years ago. The survey was conducted among 1,002 adults, aged 18 or older. Nearly half, 49 percent, said the Bible was the “inspired word of God,” while 19 percent called it an “ancient book of fables.” Only 3 percent had no opinion.
Literal belief in the Bible was highest among older Americans (36 percent), those with lowest levels of education (39 percent), Southerners (39 percent), Republicans (33 percent), and Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians (37 percent).
Should career Christians (clergy, church administrators, etc.) be concerned about this downward trend? Probably not if they are close to retirement. :-)
The problem isn’t dogma, but original thinking. It’s much easier for someone to tell you what to think, especially if you’re not that great of thunker to start with. It’s the whole shepherd and sheep relationship. Only in the last century was critical and original thinking encouraged. People were thought to be too ignorant to decide for themselves. Whether that has changed or not is open for debate.
man, does that really mean that 29% of Americans are actually following “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12
and that would not be a bad thing at all …
Odd … once upon a time the Roman Catholic church told people what to believe, and it wasn’t literally from the Bible, but all the peasantry thought it was. Then a guy called Martin Luther came along, challenged them, and, of course purely coincidentally, there was an era of great scientific and rational progress at the same time … and many of the scientists making that progress took the Bible literally … admitedly you can interpret the history differently, but that doesn’t make my point any less valid.
I’m very happy to be in that 28%. I choose to live my life as God’s Word as my guide. It’s the obedience most people have trouble with.
Yea. the same 28% that got Bush into office. Still a scary number.
3. The Scientific Revolution probably did have something to the Reformation, which kicked off a lot of intellectual ferment. But I would say that a “return” to Biblical literalism was not what did it.
And we should keep in mind that the men who preserved and translated the science of ancient Greece were also religious men – Islamic and Christian. As were the “natural philosophers” of the Middle Ages. The whole idea that religion and science are starkly and irrevocably opposed is a gross oversimplification.
An interaction that has been going on for centuries cannot be defined simply by the debates of school boards in Kansas.
Can’t wait for the next 90 years to pass, if the trend continues.
I think the world will be much better off with less orthodox, dogmatic people.
Good morality does not equal the bible. It’s scary that the bible is the only thing keeping some people from stealing, killing and so on.
How does this increase happen? (adjusting for the fact that not everyone stays a fundie after they leave Dad’s house)
LOTS of babies. Many, many many babies. Fundies don’t believe in birth control. They tend to get pregnant early and often.
And if God has been talking to you, you might want to look up “schizophrenia”.
Surely the bible was written by men. As such how can it be the “word of God”. Yup, 28% a very scary number.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the absolute worst-case scenario is that the Bible is 100% true, and the one and only true God is exactly as he’s described in the Bible.
It strikes me as odd that people who universally decry people like Hitler or Hussein as being evil seem to overlook the fact that the God they worship INVENTED genocide, and gave it a thorough trial run at the time of Noah. He killed infants, children, women and men, not to mention unborn fetuses. Surely not all of those people killed were so wicked they deserved to be drowned to death, yet for some reason God preferred this type of genocide to a precise targeting of his kills.
In another particularly heinous event, a man was found to be gathering sticks on the Sabbath, probably for firewood. He was brought to Moses, who, after consulting with God, handed down the punishment of torture to death by stoning. Either God had no concept of the punishment fitting the crime, or breaking the Sabbath was so unspeakably evil that going to hell wasn’t bad enough a punishment, the offender deserved to be tortured on his way to hell.
Whatever monsters live under your bed, they cannot compare to the monster that lives in your Bible.
10: The original christian church never considered the collected works of jesus’ sayings to be written by god; after all they were at the council of Nicea, and voted which gospels would be canon and which not. they knew damned well the books were written by men. they chose which men and which books.
The American Fundies invented Biblical literalism in this age; they truly invented the Rapture and the American Armageddon in the 1800’s. They are dangerous, power-hungry, and growing with each 6 kid family.
11: Amen. the Jaweh of the Fundies was a monster, based on the psychotic and powerful patriarchs that have tortured the middle east since time immemorial. I can’t imagine a more perfect Satan than the God of the Old Testament.
couple more things afore i go: just because the percentage has gone down, doesn’t mean that there aren’t many more literalists now than 30 years ago. thirty years ago, we had a bit over 200 million people. now we have 300-350 million. also, a huge majority of the latin american illegals are hard-core literalists, and aren’t being counted at all, since they don’t speak english and are not exactly jumping up to participate in the census and opinion surveys. there are tens of million of them.
OK. A nonsense survey asks if the Bible is literally true. How am I to interpret the question? If the Bible is literally true, does that mean that the Bible contains no symbolism, parable or poetry? Or is the question only asking if the Bible is really true in all its historical references, miraculous claims, prophecies and moral teachings?
“Justice was being delivered to a man who defied that gift from the Almighty to the people of Iraq.”— George Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2003
Yeah, right. Why not join Satan’s campaign to obliterate faith?
Lk 18:8 Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
I think people are overlooking the most important facts is this situation. It’s not whether the Bible is true or not it is whether or not you are willing to believe a self appointed know-it-all that decides to post these types of stats on his blog. And yes I am talking about your never-wrong host John Devorak. I should also point out that this is not the first time John has decided to bash and try to discredit the Christian community in this country. If this is anything other than your first time visiting his blog you should know that. This whole thing smacks of intolerance and makes me wonder if John hates people of the Jewish or Muslim faiths as well. I guess we all have to ask ourselves if we are comfortable with who we are and what we believe individually and not let others do our thinking for us, because we will all have to answer to God when our time comes.
PcMonster — I’ve decided your time has come and you will have to answer to me. At a minimum, for being so damned dumb you never noticed this Post came from KB — not John “Devorak”.
Whether I notice who placed the post doesn’t matter. Its Johns blog, his name is on it he is ultimately responsible. And thanks for the compliment, I love you too.
2 Timothy 3-16 and 17
All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in rightousness, so that the man of God can may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Peter 1-20
Above all, you must understand that no prophesy of Scripture came about by the prohet’s own interpretation. For prohecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
My take from these passages is that it is the inspired word of God through the Holy Spirit. It seems a few comments are from people unfamiliar with the text. I just figured that these would give them the bibles explanation of where the words come from. Dvorak, you guys love to stir it up. I would like to get Johns take on the bible and religion in general. Mine is that organized religion is evil and true christ followers are few in them. Its a shame that so many people hold their ideas about religion from corrupt relgious leaders who have used christianity for their own worldly gain.
As a Presbyterian minister I am glad this number is dropping. I’d like people to take the Bible seriously, rather than literally.
On a related note, yet another dvorak blog article that reflects a close-minded narrow view of Christians. Although the fundies speak loudest they aren’t the only Christians out there. Thanks again for the stereotype.
It’s less important how many believe whatever is in the bible literally or figuratively, but whether they’re fanatical enough to act on it. My bet is they’d rather not burn their opulence for repentence.
As you can learn by reading the above by Clay, men wrote the Bible (What?! You wanted monkeys to write it?) by inspiration from the Holy Spirit. It is by this same Spirit that a true believer understands these writings.
Organized religion has pretty much always been evil, if you read the New Testament it is obvious that Jesus is aiming most of His criticism at the leaders of organized religion of that time. When there were first Christian believers they were hunted down and murdered by these leaders. Hated for having a one on one relationship with The Lord and not going through them.
The essence of belief in that book is that God deals with the individual (“God is not a respecter if men”) meaning that He thinks no more of a world leader than he does a poor peasant. If you truly believe then you will be able to understand how God “talks” to people though these works written by inspired men.
As a man who loves science and computers, I am always annoyed that so many in these fields feel it necessary to attack spirituality. Since man and woman one, people have tried to prove God wrong, the human ego is really something.
#18, PcMonster, what part of Dvorack Uncensored don’t you understand? We are individually responsible for our own comments here. What is obvious is that you as a Christian are intolerant of valid critical discussion on what you believe in. The religion detractors have quoted the Bible and certain facts in history for support of their arguments, and your response is to criticize the absent host and malevolently imply that he “hates” religious groups. You call yourself a Christian, but by any definition of the word your post is most unchristianlike.
Mathew 7:1,2 -“1 “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.”
If you are able to think for yourself, why not show some confidence in what you believe and contest some of the posts you think are wrong or innacurate with verifiable evidence to the contrary.
How do you explain #11 for instance?
The Lord thy God is a wrathful God!!!!
Means…..God will get you!!!
AS the Editor-in-chief of this blog I do not think we take a negative stand on “Christians” in general. 90-percent of the readers are Christians and probably most of the staff is too — although they do not associate themselves with a religion. These posts are not about Christians or Christianity but about anti-intellectualism. At least that’s the way I see it. The fact that the comments deteriorate is another matter.
I am an atheist, though I studied in Catholic school, run by a brotherhood. The brothers, roughly equivalent to monks, all said that the bible was NOT to be interpreted literally. I’ve heard many priests defend that as well… makes you wonder just how fundamentalist those twenty something percent are when the church itself is saying otherwise, at least the Catholic church.
Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus” is an excellent resource to get at why many of us believe the Bible is a sacred book, but not literally true. The Bible is a book formed by a community about that communities experience of God. The problem lies in the belief that somehow the Bible is something it was never intended to be — a book of history or science (or, as some like to say, “the owners manual for humanity”). The Bible is a story about the relationship between the creator and the created. That story uses all sorts of literary devices to deal with the mystery of the divine — some literal, and others not. Thus, belief in a “literal Bible” has very little to do with faith in God, or participation in church.
Rev. Jay, When I was young and in catechism class, the bible was expected to be taken seriously and there was a very real attempt by the nun instructors to instill the fear of “the wrath of God” as a consequence.
Over the past 50 years, the age of communication of information, the validity of the bible as fact has crumbled. So over that time span the response of the church was to slowly change their stance of the bible as the “truth” to that of a story not to be taken literally, as it became evident the Bible was unable to stand up to scrutiny of the average citizen.
That’s why the church is losing followers. The church has lost credibility with a generation of free thinkers who dared question the bible and found it to be self contradicting and morally and ethically flawed. We were threatened by burning in hell if we didn’t do exactly as told, and NOW you say it’s not all to be taken literally, it’s mostly just a story.
You said, “That story uses all sorts of literary devices to deal with the mystery of the divine — some literal, and others not.”
What gives any person the right to deetermine what was meant as literal and what was not? When the “story” becomes contradictory to the church’s version of God, THAT’s when they step in with their “not literal” excuse. It’s very transparent and rather pathetic. In this day and age, you won’t get away with it.
(John, sorry about the misspelling of your name in my previous post)